American Gothic
ENGL 391W, T, Th 3.05pm – 4.20pm
Asst. Prof. Siân Silyn Roberts (Klapper 612)
Send all queries to [email protected]
Send all assignments to [email protected]
Office hours: T 1-3pm
Course description
American authors have long experimented with the languages of horror and terror to
produce the national literary style we call American gothic fiction. In recent decades, most
scholarly criticism on this type of writing has remained largely unanimous in its assessment
of this style of writing: namely, that our gothic fiction is all about representing – in the
heavily coded languages of metaphoric blackness, live burial, murder, sleepwalking,
contagion, ventriloquism, to name just a few – the crimes of America’s guilty past (slavery,
land appropriation, revolutionary regicide, failed political utopianism, etc). That is to say, the
gothic is all about America’s historical demons. But that criticism has been surprisingly
reluctant to ask a rather obvious question: why was gothic fiction so incredibly popular with
changing American readerships if all it was supposed to do was make us feel bad about
history’s mistakes? We will try to figure out some possible answers to this question.
We will consider traditional gothic criticism alongside canonical and not-so-canonical literary
works. For me everything begins in the eighteenth century and so will this course, with
some British Enlightenment philosophy, America’s captivity narratives, and European gothic
conventions. This section will give us a sense of the basic rhetorical tools and ideas
American gothic writers have been working with. Having arrived at an understanding of
what characterizes American fiction as gothic, we can then spend the remainder of the
semester focusing on how some of our fiction engages, changes, disavows, and revises
gothic phenomena.
Required texts
Stephen King, The Shining (New York: Simon and Schuster) ISBN: 9780743424424
Charles Brockden Brown, Wieland; Or, The Transformation (Penguin) ISBN: 0140390790
Herman Melville, Billy Budd and Selected Tales (Oxford) ISBN: 0192839039
Harriot Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Penguin) ISBN: 01404337959
Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House (Penguin) ISBN: 0143039989
Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto (Oxford), ISBN: 0199537216
Robert Montgomery Bird, Sheppard Lee (NYRB), ISBN: 1590172299
All additional readings will be posted on Blackboard as electronic copies.
Please note: All of these novels should be available at the Queens Bookstore, but all too
frequently the wrong editions are made available for purchase. Please make sure you have the
correct editions when you purchase the textbooks. I choose these editions for the quality of the
editor’s scholarship, and different editions may well have poor or inadequate notes and
introductions. Discussion is also much easier when we all have the same editions.
Also, you will likely find Chesnutt’s Conjure Tales available at the bookstore as one of the
texts for this class. We will not be reading Conjure Tales this semester, so you don’t need to
buy it.
Course requirements
You must complete ALL of the following course requirements to pass the course. Failure to
submit any part of the following constitutes an automatic Fail.
1. Participation (20%). This part of your grade comes solely from the contributions you
make to class discussion. These should be informed, thoughtful comments based on
the week’s readings. If you are absent from class, you obviously cannot participate;
hence repeated absences will significantly lower your participation grade. Please note
that attendance is NOT the same thing as participation. You can come to class
consistently for the entire semester, but if you do not contribute to class discussion,
you will forfeit this part of your grade. If, for whatever reason, you feel any
reservations about participating in class discussion, please do not hesitate to see me,
and we will work out some strategies for you.
2. Weblog (20%). Each student will maintain an individual blog for the duration of the
semester. For the most part, you will be responding to the readings, class discussion,
and your peers’ ideas. Most weeks I will give you short blog assignments (close
readings, responses to certain ideas, web research, etc). In addition to completing
these, you must also respond with comments to your peers’ blog entries. Everyone is
free to post in response at any time, but you must post at least once a week for
the duration of the semester. Of course, you should post more frequently if you
are interested in doing so! The blog is intended as a place where you can write
informally, and experiment with ideas that come up during your own reading and in
class discussion. Approach your own blog creatively and informally. Approach your
peers’ blogs in the same fashion, but also with respect. I will be keeping tabs on your
blog entries. My evaluation will be based only on evidence of sincere effort and
critical engagement, not your web expertise or writing structure. The class blog can be
accessed at http://blogs.qc.cuny.edu. Click on “Blog Login.”
3. Writing Assignments (25%) Over the course of the semester, you will write three short
(two pages) close readings on passages from the readings. I will explain the
requirements of these readings when I issue the first one. ONE of these short
readings will form the basis of your longer essay (see below)
4. Long essay (25%) Critical essay expanded from one of the shorter close readings you
write over the course of the semester. Please note: you can submit this paper any time
over the course of the semester after you have submitted the first short reading and
before the final day of class.
5. Final (10%) This will take the form of a final blog entry. This is an opportunity for
you to be as creative as you like, bringing to bear all the critical skills and writing
expertise you have developed over the course of the semester. I will provide more
details closer to the date.
Extensions/Late Submission Policy.
All written assignments must be submitted by their due date as a hard copy in my office
(Klapper 612 – just shove it under the door) or to [email protected]. No late
submissions will be accepted unless you have arranged an extension with me.
Extensions must be arranged with me well in advance, and will be granted on a case-bycase basis.
Class Absence and Lateness
Repeated absence from class will adversely affect your Participation grade. If you are
late for class more than three times, I will deduct 5% from your participation grade, with
5% taken off for every late entry after that. PLEASE don’t be late. It is disruptive and
disrespectful to your peers and your instructor.
References and Plagiarism
All assignments must conform to the referencing guidelines laid out in either the Modern
Language Association Handbook for Writers of Research Papers or the Chicago Manual of Style. This
includes referencing all primary and secondary sources under a Works Cited section.
Learning to reference your work is simply good academic practice, as well as being a guard
against plagiarism.
Plagiarism is submitting another person’s work as your own without acknowledgement.
This includes copying another source verbatim (books, articles, other students’ assignments,
the internet, etc), buying a paper from another student or from and online source, passing
someone else’s research off as your own, or failing to properly acknowledge another’s
research. Contrary to expectation, it is actually extremely easy to spot when a paper has been
plagiarized. Professors at Queens also have access to “Turnitin,” an online resource that
allows us to check a student’s work against a large database of documents on the Internet
and other plagiarized papers. Plagiarism is instant grounds for failing the course and is a
disciplinary matter at Queens.
Office hours
I will hold office hours every Tuesday from 1-3pm. This is your opportunity to talk to me
about anything relating to the course. This includes – but is not limited to – our readings,
ideas that you would like clarified, points from in-class discussion that you would like to
explore further, help with your written assignments, advice about your writing, etc. I strongly
encourage you to take advantage of office hours. Please note: if you can’t make it during office
hours, please email me at [email protected] to schedule an appointment.
Reading schedule. This is a tentative schedule. We’ll probably adjust it as we proceed.
I. “Our Guilty Nation”
Week one
Tues 1/27
Introduction
Thurs 1/29
Giles, “What is ‘Gothic’”?; Lloyd-Smith, “What is American
Gothic?” and “Key Texts”; Poe, “The Black Cat”
Week two
Tues 2/3
Thurs 2/6
King, The Shining, Poe, “The Masque of the Red Death”
King, The Shining
Week three
Tues 2/10
Thurs 2/12
Leslie Fiedler, from Love and Death in the American Novel
College closed – NO CLASS
II. The Political Origins of the Gothic
Week four
Tues 2/17
Thurs 2/19
Rowlandson, Narrative; the Panther Captivity, possibly others.
John Locke, from An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Week five
Tues 2/24
Thurs 2/26
Walpole, The Castle of Otranto, Baldick and Mighall, “Gothic Criticism”
Walpole, The Castle of Otranto. First close reading due
Week six
Tues 3/3
Thurs 3/5
Writing workshop
Class CANCELLED
III. Inside the Castle
Week seven
Tues 3/10
Brockden Brown, Wieland
Thurs 3/12
Brockden Brown, Wieland; Davidson, “Early American Gothic: The
Limits of Individualism”
Week eight
Tues 3/17
Thurs 3/19
Mitchell, The Asylum; Or, Alonzo and Melissa
Mitchell, The Asylum; Or, Alonzo and Melissa
Week nine
Tues 3/24
Thurs 3/26
Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Week ten
Tues 3/31
Thurs 4/2
Week eleven
Tues 4/7
Thurs 4/9
Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House
Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House; Perkins, The Yellow Wallpaper.
Second close reading due
Writing Workshop
College closed for Spring Break – NO CLASS until 4/21
IV. Communities of the Gothic
Week twelve
Tues 4/21
Bird, Sheppard Lee
Thurs 4/23
Bird, Sheppard Lee
Week thirteen
Tues 4/28
Thurs 4/30
Week fourteen
Tues 5/5
Thurs 5/7
Irving, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”
Hawthorne, “My Kinsman, Major Molineux”
Poe, “The Philosophy of Composition,” “The Masque of the Red
Death,” “Ligeia”
Poe, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Murders in the Rue
Morgue.” Third close reading due
Week fifteen
Tues 5/12
Thurs 5/14
Melville, Benito Cereno
Melville, Benito Cereno.
All final assignments due: Wednesday May 20, 5pm.